Rick Neel: DTD at MC #30

Hello everyone,

Today is the day. I'd like to invite everyone to check out our "new and improved" Blog. Hops made the improvements that we asked him to do. I think that you will be very pleased with it.

Thanks for the hard work, Hops.

After spending the last couple of posts concentrating on the new email address list. The address list for it is: ***removed for privacy reasons, contact me at rneel11@comcast.net*** And We have added several new addresses since the last time. So check it if you haven't, and if you have, then I will be posting new addresses at the bottom of this email. These addresses don't appear on our blog, for reasons of privacy. I don't want spammers finding these addresses and loading up the email boxes of the guys. I did get one note from an alumnus, requesting that I remove him from our email lists, this is a first and made me pretty sad. I will, of course, honor his request. If any of you know him, please do honor it also, and don't mention DTD to him if you are in contact with him ... thanks.

Now for some news.

From Shawn Selby we have a letter to the editor of the Rainbow. This letter, in my estimation is probably going to raise a few eyebrows among our chapter, as well as the International fraternity. I think that he expressed his feelings quite well. So here it is:

Dear editor,

I read with a mixture of revulsion and amusement the letter from Brother Thomas B. Romine Jr. (University of Texas, 1948) denouncing "diversity," homosexuals and calling for my Chapter, Epsilon Upsilon at Marietta College, to be "drummed out of the Fraternity."

Wow.

Brother Romine ticks off his laudable achievement of work for the Fraternity seemingly as justification for attacking Epsilon Upsilon's embrace of its openly gay Brothers. However, his long history of involvement with Delta Tau Delta unfortunately seems to illustrate that he has long forgotten the meaning of the Four Fundamental Principles of Deltism, the Ritual and the Oath.

It is just stunning that he would seek to do harm to a group of Brothers he's never met simply because they've embraced their openly gay brothers instead of, say, giving them the "Matthew Shepherd treatment."

I am an alumnus of Epsilon Upsilon. And I am gay. I came out shortly after I graduated in 1992. I have always been comfortable as a gay Delt alumnus because Deltism is not incompatible with being gay. In fact, Delt Principles require that a Delt struggling with his orientation come out. Coming out is an act of Truth, Power, Faith and Courage.

In the nearly 15 years I have been an Epsilon Upsilon alumnus, I have watched, with pride, as the Chapter moved from having attidues about gay people that were more in line with Brother Romine's to where it is today -- among the leaders of our Fraternity in accepting gay members. This in the Fraternity that took a lead in ending hazing and discrimination based on race and religion.

I would like to invite Brother Romine to visit the Brothers of Epsilon Upsilon to get to know them like I have. I am proud to call them friends as well as Brothers. They represent the future of the fraternity; Brother Romine is an emblem of an ugly past.

And as much as Brother Romine's views on homosexuality are set opposite of everything I believe in, I'm proud to be a member of an international Fraternity
that can embrace both someone like him and someone like me.

Are you Delt enough to come to Epsilon Upsilon, Brother Romine?

Shawn Selby
Marietta College, 1992

From Matt Dole, I have some news for you guys that enjoy coming to Marietta for Homecoming. We have the dates of the 2007 weekend, and TENTATIVE dates for the 2008 weekend. That is the one I would like all of you make note of, so you can request the time off! 2008 = EU's 40th anniversary. Be there!

Fellas -

I had a nice talk with Hub Burton (brother Delt Hub Burton) who is the Marietta College Alumni Relations Director today. A couple things came out of that meeting that will interest you -

1. The dates for the 39th anniversary (2007) homecoming are October 19, 20, 21, 2007.

2. The dates for the 40th anniversary homecoming are TENTATIVELY October 24, 25, 26, 2008.

Hub expressed his thoughts that the dates would hold up, but they will not be fnalized until the OAC conference meetings next summer. In the meantime, I told Hub we would offer that date as a "circle on the calendar" type thing, plus we could go ahead and begin talks with a hotel about a block of rooms and a venue for the banquet.

3. Marietta College would like the Greeks to be much more involved in planning and marketing for homecoming. They will be seeking weekend schedules for 2007 for inclusion in the brochures in March. It might be best if we formalize some of our activities for them to include ( i.e. watch the parade, house corps meeting, football game) in the 2007 brochure as a test run for what will surely be the more detailed 2008 schedule.

4. Hub indicated that he is attempting to move the alumni banquet to Friday night, so it might not be a conflict, but I expressed that not many alumni from DTD generally attended so we did not think conflicting Saturday night events would be a tremendous problem.

So now we are ready to move forward. I will be glad to get some quotes on hotel blocks, but will need some sort of rough estimate on people thinking about making the trip - even at this early juncture.

Thanks Matt! As you can see, he is willing to try to negotiate some price breaks with the hotels, but he needs some sort of idea how many rooms will be needed. Any help here will be appreciated. Count on me Matt! I'll be there. (But I bet everyone already realized that, didn't you?)

I mentioned a while back that I had some news from Bob Peterson, from his visit to campus. For more news on that, check out the Marietta College web site. http://www.marietta.edu/ Here is Bob's news.

I have left Marietta, now in Boston visiting my son before heading back to Rome.

My Executive in Residence project went great, the kids did fabulous on their final presentations. All the guys in the project were Delts!

Look forward to doing it again in 2008 and tying it in with our 40th.

We need to have an organized fund drive for the ritual equipment, some nvestigative work needs to be done on our options (buy ready-made or have the current EU brother build it), make a decision on what we plan to do, come up with an estimate, send out a request and tell us where and to whom to mail the checks. I'm ready to write a check but need more info.

The current e-mails I see bouncing around will not get us anywhere. Maybe Fergie and the EU chapter should discuss this and then make recommendations and organize the fund drive. We have a pretty switched on bunch there. I was so proud to be a Delt alumni these past two weeks on campus!

Fraternally,
Bob

This brings me to the last thing that I want to mention this week. The fund drive for new ritual equipment. It isn't going as well as I would have hoped. Especially with all of the interest that seems to be out there. So I talked to Fergie, because I was afraid it got stuck in committee (and you know what that means!). Here is what he told me:

I talked to Craig on Monday night and he is working on getting the info together; however, he was sick Monday. I will give Ashley a heads up and get things rolling a little more. He got reelected Guide by the way.

So hopefully more information should be coming our way shortly. But don't let that stop you from sending in a donation. The place to send it is to: Crescent Colony of Marietta, Inc. and send it to Bob Ferguson, 507 Wooster St., Marietta, Ohio 45750. Please make note on your check that it is for the ritual fund. Thank you all a lot.

For some bad news, one of our alumni has joined the Chapter Eternal. I don't have any details on the car accident. Nor do I know when it happened. But Brother Fritz Absolon, 1980, has passed away.

I, unfortunately, have several addresses that appear to be no good that appear on your email address list. Next week I will be deleting them and asking for your help in getting good addresses.

This week I am asking for help with the following Brothers: Help me out here, Steve Newton '66, Steve Critchlow '72, David Mogill '77, Jeffrey Myers '81, Jim Bailey '88, Dan Moorman '92, Brent Blackburn '97, Colin Orsini '02, and Joshua Harris '08.

That's all I have for this message. Have a good week.

Rick Neel '73